


Like A Ship, I Could Not Reach Her Shore

by Lapin



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, M/M, Monster Slaying, One-Sided Relationship, Sterek Campaign
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapin/pseuds/Lapin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek thinks on Stiles, and Beacon Hills, and his failures as an Alpha. He thinks about blonde hair, and a smirk, and laughter. He thinks about broken bones, and her hair matted and dirty.</p><p>Even in mourning, he still needs to save Scott’s dumb ass and kill monsters. There must be something in the water here in Beacon Hills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Ship, I Could Not Reach Her Shore

**Author's Note:**

> A/N I know I'm late. My computer died a horrible, horrible death earlier, and it was only with the Dr. Frankenstein level of madness that my friend was able to bring it back to life yesterday, for good, hopefully. I am rushing through these fills like a lunatic, finishing the outlines I'd started for the prompts. They will get done, you have not been cheated, my life is just annoying. 
> 
> This fill is for Pistol Bunny, who requested Sterek. Thank you for your donation to help save some wolves!
> 
> Disclaimer: Title is from the Flogging Molly song "Devil's Dance Floor" off the 2000 album _Swagger_

Derek knows a lot of things.

He knows he's too old for Stiles, knows Stiles deserves someone a little more together, a little more human, knows without a doubt that Stiles needs someone a little better. He knows he's a little fucked up, alright, maybe a lot, knows humans confuse him more than anything, knows he gets wound up too tight sometimes, knows he can't get himself together because there's not much to get together. 

But when Stiles is in the passenger seat and talking a mile a minute about something Derek has no hope of even beginning to comprehend, all he wants is for him to stay there. He's not sure what that means, overall, not sure what he's even doing, because a lot of times Stiles annoys him, and a lot of times he likes him, and is that the same as being annoyed? He's getting mixed up by a high-schooler who refuses to be scared of him, who back-talks him and rolls his eyes at him and gives off the distinct air of not-impressed all the fucking time, and now all Derek wants to do is impress him

And that's ridiculous, is the dumbest thing he's ever thought, and he swears he can hear Laura laughing at him so hard it hurts, can almost see her bent over and wheezing on the floor, tears in her eyes. He's not even sure she would have liked Stiles, could have gone either way, finding him irritating or precious. He never could understand her.

He likes the chatter, in his own way though. And when Stiles is in the passenger seat, talking a mile a minute at Derek about whatever he's been up to since Derek's seen him last, and hey, are mermaids real, all Derek can think is that he's kind of starting to like Stiles.

He kind of likes Stiles.

He likes Stiles.

If Stiles wasn't underage and the Sheriff's son, he might even say he was a little into Stiles. 

“I think they're real.” He answers, and Stiles asks something about souls and Derek gets confused, loses track of the conversation entirely, and Jesus, he doesn't give Scott enough credit. How does he follow along? Scott's not even that smart, definitely not this smart. Hell, Derek's not this smart. “Do you ever stop thinking?”

Stiles blinks, raises his eyebrows. “No.” He answers, simply. 

“Do you ever shut up?” 

“Not yet.” Stiles has his hands jammed in the front pocket of his hoodie, is staring straight ahead at the dashboard, like it has something interesting on it, even as his foot taps a rhythm. Is he bored? “How much longer?”

Derek shrugs, leans over the steering wheel. “Maybe another hour. Their kind don't like bright light.”

Stiles smirks. “Are you sure it's not a vampire?”

“For the last fucking time, there is no such thing,” he's cut off mid-rant when he sees how Stiles is grinning at him, his shoulders up by his ears as he stretches his arms while keeping his hands in his pocket. Something pops, inaudible to a human, and Stiles groans appreciatively. “Is it the highlight of your sad little day to fuck with me?” 

Stiles frowns. “Seeing as how I'm stuck in a car with you for the next couple hours and you won't let me play Fruit Ninja, yeah, it's the highlight of my day today.” He's still sore about Derek turning his damn phone off then. 

“I told you, I can't stand that sound those games make.” The high-pitched beeping was grating on Derek's sensitive ears, and he sure as hell wasn't going to be subjected to it in the small space of the Camaro. “You can't read a book?” 

“Hello? Human?” He raises his eyebrows. “I can't see in the dark, Fido.”

“One more dog joke, and I rip out your spleen.” Derek replies, resisting the urge to let his claws out so his hands could stretch more comfortably. He'd punctured the leather seats two weeks ago, when he and Stiles were doing a stake-out the next county over, after Stiles had driven him up the wall with his constant questions about pack dynamics. It always irritated him when Stiles asked questions he didn't have the exact answer to, made him feel stupid. “Get some new material.”

“It's such an easy target though. I mean, playing catch with Scott is hilarious now. It's like he wants to turn into a Lab.” He chuckles to himself, as Derek eyes the treeline. 

“He does.” He says, watching a bit of movement carefully, then relaxing when he sees it's just a rabbit. “Not a Lab though.”

Stiles is staring. “Wait, what?” 

Derek settles back against the seat, keeps his eyes on the trees even as he prays to God to save him from the utter stupidity he is surrounded by in this town. If Stiles hadn't worked it out, then Scott was probably a danger, again, and Derek's going to have to bail his stupid ass out, again. He's getting tired of this. Boyd never needs to be saved. Even Isaac has himself mostly squared away. As long as Derek feeds them and lets them follow him around for most of the week, they never complain. 

“Dude, care to elaborate on anything here, or are you going to just be your broody self here and make me drag it out of you?” He huffs, slouching. “Let me tell you Derek, I'm getting tired of being the giver in our creepy little relationship here. How about you give me something to work with, for once?” He's not wrong, Derek supposes, but he's not sure why Stiles feels the need to point out that their relationship could be seen as weird. Not that they even have a relationship. More like a symbiotic sort of existence. 

The sun is slowly sinking beneath the trees, darkening the car.

“Scott's been a beta for almost a year now. His shift is starting to complete.” He answers at last, as he watches a sparrow flit across the grass, towards the trees. 

“What do you mean?”

“Takes awhile for the shift to take. Scott got the initial parts pretty quickly, the strength and speed and healing. His senses developed at a good pace, better than Isaac's, slower than Boyd's. Probably his asthma slowed it down a bit, but Boyd was also healthier, stronger, when I turned him.” It's starting to get cold, and he considers the risks of turning the car on, to keep Stiles comfortable. “He's starting to reach the final stages, where he'll get the full shift. Boyd can do it already, but that's because Boyd is a lot more open about the bite. He's let it happen, so it came naturally.”

It's a little unusual, really, but Derek had expected Boyd to get it quick. He's strong, and level-headed, and in absolute control, exactly the right person to get a full shift right. It had been good, he admits, to have another wolf to run with, and Boyd never made any secret of loving every second of it. 

“Whoa, are you telling me Boyd can go full Balto on us?” Stiles sounds amazed, and something in Derek glows with pride. He is amazing, after all. They all are. “Can Isaac?”

“Not yet. He's getting there.” Isaac's anxious nature and flashy temper weren't helping him. He kept getting halfway, or, the one time he'd managed four legs at last, getting too afraid of himself and turning back. He was hurting bad over the failure though, no matter how hard Derek tried to convince him that Boyd was an exception, not the rule. He was sick with jealousy at Boyd, and upset with himself, and had taken to hiding out in the woods, up in trees, away from everyone. “Scott's too resistant to the bite. His body wants to turn, his mind won't let him. He starting to get headaches?” 

Stiles is frowning at the dashboard again, his leg tapping a rhythm on the floor of the car. “Is it going to get worse, if he keeps resisting?”

Derek nods. “He'll start getting joint pain. Be harder to sleep. Keep food down. It'll be easier if he just shifts once, lets it take fully. He might still get headaches, but this way his body will have fully integrated with the bite.” This he at least knows well, after living with the Murphy pack in North Carolina with Laura. They had been mostly bitten instead of born, like the Hales, and had seen a few weird things. 

He'd never seen a thing like Jackson though, still. Or that redhead. There had to be something in the water here in Beacon Hills. 

“You didn't think this was something you should, oh, I don't know, mention?” Stiles demands, clearly agitated. Shit, how did he keep pissing him off? Derek had never managed to put his foot in his mouth as often as he did with Stiles. “Jesus, Derek, this is always the problem. You never tell anyone anything, and then everything goes to hell, when it could have been avoided if you'd just talked to someone! Fucking-” He rubs his hand over his mouth, while Derek keeps watching the trees, trying not to be effected. 

“Yeah, because me and Scott are always having heart-to-hearts, highlight of my damn week,” Derek growls. “What the fuck do you want from me, Stiles? He never wants to ask for help, and when I offer, he claims he's got it under control, usually what he says before someone gets hurt because of his stupidity.”

“Oh, because you're one to talk?” Stiles actually kicks his feet up and braces them against the dash. “You have got be kidding me, Derek. This is you and Scott and your fucking issues with each other that just keep going round and round, getting us all hurt in the process. You two are so wrapped up in being right, neither of you will listen to any reason, no matter how bad things get, like Jackson, and Lydia, and,” and he stops. 

Derek doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what to say. Because now all he sees is massive amounts of blonde hair and a cutting smirk and thin bones shattered with blood slowly absorbing into the dirt, the smirk gone, the hair matted, ruined. She had loved her hair. That's what he had thought, as he looked down at her, how mad she would be that they had ruined her hair. 

He sees Boyd, his stoic second, sobbing as he gathered her up in his arms , her blood-stained hair in his face as her broken neck made her head loll back against the crook of his elbow, her arms at an impossible angle, and all the blood in his nose, a smell he still wakes to with the sounds of Boyd crying in his ears. 

With the feeling of his own complete and total failure rolling in his stomach, knowing he was unworthy to bear the title of Alpha, not with a beta rotting in the ground before she was even old enough to vote. 

“I tore out one's throat for it.” Derek says, even though he knows it doesn't make anything better. “I killed the other one out of pity, after what Boyd did to him.” His poor mourning beta, tearing the other Alpha twin to shreds before he could even get his claws unsheathed, his uncontrollable rage and loss turning him into the scariest kind of wolf; the one with nothing left to lose. “But I can't bring her back. No matter what I do. Peter says there's nothing left of her in this world to pull her back. Boyd's not strong enough mentally to be an anchor without going insane, and it might not even work. I won't lose them both.” 

It had been bad enough, having to see her parents at the funeral. He won't look at another pair. He can't bear it. 

“It's not fair.” Stiles says, and Derek resists looking at him. They're supposed to be watching the treeline. “But unless you want it to happen again, you and Scott have got to get your shit straight. You know he won't come to you, and yeah, I get it hurts your Alpha pride, but I'd rather you have to deal with Scott being self-righteous than having to go to another damn funeral. I won't bury Boyd, or Isaac. Or Scott.” 

Derek sits silently, before he says, “I can't believe you just called Scott self-righteous.”

“Yeah, well, you're a dick a lot of the time, so stop smirking.”

“I wasn't.” He protests mildly. 

“You were. I know your smirk-y face. That was your smirk-y face.” He shifts, and the leather creaks. “You have to got to be the parent here, whether Scott wants you to be or not. I can try to get him on the right track, but you've got to try.” He frowns, licks his lips. “You've got to _try_.” 

Derek gives in and cracks his back noisily. He thinks of her, on the ground, her brown eyes wide and staring up at him, glazed over and blank in death. How they had hit her so hard on her right, the blood vessels had burst, and bled red in the corner. Her mascara lines of black down her face from where she'd cried. He thinks of her laughing. He thinks of her and Boyd sitting together on the old couch in his burnt-out living room. He thinks of her putting Isaac in a headlock, grinning. 

He thinks of her talking about the program to become a pastry chef at the community college. He thinks of her baking cookies. He thinks of how the smell of flour and sugar had clung to her hair.

He thinks of Stiles in her place, broken and beaten and dead, because of his own trust issues. He thinks of it, and his stomach turns, until he thinks he might be sick from it. He thinks of Sheriff Stilinski, and a headstone beside his dead wife's, and he thinks of his own full family plot and being all alone in the world. 

“I'll talk to Scott.” He says. “I will. I'll make him listen.”

Stiles relaxes, goes back to being a boneless teenager in the passenger seat, and starts to hum under his breath just a bit. The treeline stays calm, only birds and small rodents moving. 

Finally, the deer appears. The doe is just a doe at first glance, but they've got three dead man trampled by hooves to prove different. “There she is,” Derek says, opening the door. The wind brings her scent to him, proves him right, because she sure as hell doesn't smell like any deer he's ever been around. “Stay in the car.” He orders, and slams the driver's side shut.

The doe turns her head towards him, and yeah, those eyes aren't a deer's or a human's.

Derek stalks towards her, hands in his pockets. “This is my territory, bitch. Hunt somewhere else.” 

Where there was a deer stands a woman, First Nations, beautiful. With hooves for feet. “Oh, what's a matter Spot, I kill someone you like?” She coos, showing a mouthful of very even, very white teeth. “What are you going to do about it?”

He gets his claws out.

She smirks.

It of course goes badly. 

“Told you to stay in the car,” he groans from the forest floor, as Stiles shoves his ribs back into place with a disgusted frown. “How hard is it to just listen to me?”

“Oh yeah, because you were doing so well against Bambi there.” Stiles says, with a vicious shove that puts all his ribs back into the correct spot, enough they finally start healing. “Bitch was kicking your ass, don't even.” She really had been, Derek can admit, before Stiles smacked her across the back of her head with a pine branch Deaton had done something to.

This is not the point though.

“Bambi was a guy, and what is it with you and Disney movies?” His shoulder is next, and Stiles is no nicer about it. “Bambi, Balto,”

“Balto isn't a Disney movie, dumbass.” Stiles corrects, clearly pissed off with him, like it's his fault that he got trampled by a demon deer siren thing that should not exist in any world where God loved him. The bitch had bit him, for Christ's sake. Deer were herbivores, it should have hurt less than it did. Fucking magic and fucking crazy ass sirens and _ow_ , that had not been necessary. “Stop moving, you'll heal faster if you just let me finish, you big baby!”

“She tried to trample me!” Derek reminds him. 

“You were trying to disembowel her!” Stiles snaps back, and just like that, Derek's wrist is snapped back to where it's supposed to be. “This is gross, just so you know. This is really fucking gross, and I can't believe I have to do this for you, you jackass. God, it's under my fingernails, that's so nasty, and unsanitary, you'd better not have anything freaky in your blood.”

“I'm a werewolf, I don't get any diseases!” He growls, his body struggling to shift under the perceived threat from the pain. “Are you sure she's dead?”

“Considering her head is over there and the rest of her is about twenty feet away, up in a tree, yeah, Derek, I think she's dead. Good job us, we'll go have ice cream sundaes, now just hold still!” Stiles gives in and actually sits on Derek's chest, for all his weight can actually hold him down. “I have to do your collarbone, it's like, sticking out.”

“Did you just make a Nancy Drew reference?” Derek manages to choke out. 

“Did you just get a reference?” He asks snidely.

“I didn't grow up in a cave, Stiles.” He snaps irritably, gritting his teeth as Stiles slides his busted bone back beneath the skin, the healing process starting at last. “Laura liked the stupid books, Mom used to,” he breaks off, swears, “read them to us when we were kids.” He'd liked the Hardy Boys better, but Laura had always sat on him until he agreed to Nancy Drew. Damn older sisters. 

She'd still operated on the 'sit on Derek until he does what I say' method well into high school. It had not looked good for him. 

With the collarbone back in, Derek is now fully pieced back together and healing, his bones itching unbearably as they knit themselves whole again. He groans in pain, and waits patiently, until finally, he's good to stand. The deer woman's body is still in the trees, her intestines strewn across the branches and hanging down like streamers. She stinks to high heaven to Derek, and he wrinkles his nose, searching for her head. He finds it in a raspberry bush, her black hair catching on the thorns as he picks it up, her eyes still open, tongue hanging out her mouth. Her white teeth are bloody now. 

“That's gross.” Stiles says, turning away. 

“Bite me.” Derek replies dryly, tossing the head into the center of the clearing, then climbing the tree to kick her body loose. She smacks the ground audibly, and Stiles turns green. “Suck it up,” he mocks, and Stiles gives him the finger. 

“Gross, gross, gross, my life is gross.” He chants, even as he tosses Derek the lighter and starts pouring lighter fluid over her. Derek kicks up a circle of dirt around her and makes sure there's nothing to catch, before he lights her up. When she's nothing but bones after only a few minutes, her flesh turning to black goo that makes Stiles gag, they pour sand over her, and cover her up. The forest will take care of the rest soon enough.

Derek looks at Stiles. “That all we need to do?”

Stiles nods, checking his phone. “Took her head off, check. Burned her to bones, check. Left her bones in a forest, check. That's everything. She should stay dead. Hopefully. If not, I vote woodchipper. Worked for Bobby.” 

Derek doesn't even pretend to understand what the hell he's talking about as he stretches, trying to help the healing muscle and bones settle more easily. It hurts, but pain is something he can handle pretty well, at least this kind. It's like an itch that stings, healing, but it's not too bad. 

Stiles is still looking at his phone, so Derek takes a minute to look him over. He's too young for Derek, really, and even if he wasn't, Derek's not something he wants or needs. He gets that. 

But he can help him out, help him and Scott and the rest of them get through all of this mostly intact. 

Try not to fail any of them the way he failed her. 

“Scott will need to center himself, to get the full wolf right. Focus.” When Stiles rolls his eyes, a joke already forming, Derek shakes his head. “ _Not_ Allison. It needs to be inner calm. I'm born, and I can't even always manage it, not when I'm pissed off.”

“So what do you suggest, almighty Alpha?” Stiles asks. “Yoga? Meditation? Or...? Derek?”

_“All hail the almighty Alpha!” She twirls on her toes, her blonde hair catching on her lip gloss, and jumps on Boyd's back locking her arms and legs tight around him like a spider monkey. “Onward, boyfriend! We must go retrieve more tribute for the almighty Alpha!”_

_“Babe,” he laughs, deep and happy. “You're pissing him off,”_

_When she looks at Derek, pouting, he frowns. She's irritating him._

_“Boo, almighty Alpha, boo on you! Boyfriend! I demand you take me to the 7-11 for Slurpees!”_

_“If you call me that one more time-”_

“Dude?”

Derek shoves his hands in his pockets. Tries to keep the image in his head, of her laughing. Happy. Alive. 

“Come on,” Derek says, hitching his shoulder back towards the Camaro. “I'll buy you ice cream.”

“Sweet.” Stiles replies, taking up pace beside him. After they've stepped out of the tree lines, he hip checks Derek, something no one's done to him since Laura died. It's an oddly reassuring gesture. “Hey.” He smiles, elbows him. “It's going to get better, alright? You and Scott will eventually stop fucking with each other, and, you know, we'll get along, and maybe, after awhile,”

“You know it doesn't stop hurting.” Derek shakes his head, unlocking the Camaro. “You just manage to stop thinking about it so much.”

Stiles rests his elbows on top of the car. “No. You just manage to stop thinking about the bad stuff. Just the good parts.” 

If anyone but Stiles had said it, Derek would have been tempted to punch them, he's not going to lie. But it is Stiles, who sits at a stone marker in the graveyard, not too far from the Hale family plot, and talks to a woman long past hearing him about everything he's done that week, like she can. Derek can't bring himself to face his mother's headstone, still. He can talk to Laura, no problem. Can tell Laura all about the stupid, scrawny kid who calls him on his shit and won't leave him alone and makes him smile sometimes. Can imagine her laughing at him, teasing him. 

“Get in the car or I'm leaving you.” He says.

Stiles mimes a shot to the heart, but clambers in, shutting the door too hard. “Fine, be a broody loner. See if I care. You're still buying me ice cream.”

He thinks of her asking sweetly for a chocolate milkshake while she leaned on Boyd, across from Derek, Isaac at his right. 

He thinks of Laura, teaching him how to pitch, the way her hair looked in the dying afternoon light, the way she laughed at campy werewolf movies, and her face the first time she ate wasabi. 

He thinks of his mother, reading Nancy Drew. 

“Yeah.” He says, and starts the car. “I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Agh, I will never get these done, why laptop, why
> 
> Though I did manage to write a short fic on my phone. Quite a feat.


End file.
